This course explores why climate change adaptation is important in the African context. Africa is considered one to be one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change. Historically, climate-related hazards such as drought, flooding, pest and disease outbreaks, coastal storms and heat waves have had devastating impacts on people and the environment in which they live. Often the damage knocks back progress that has been made in social and economic development, slowing down the achievement of development goals. Climate models suggest that many of these climatic hazards will intensify as the global climate warms. Building resilience to climate risks, through adaptation, is critically important for future development in Africa.
The course will examine adaptation in theory and in practice, through a focus on four sectors that are critically important for climate resilient development in Africa: Water Security, Agriculture and Food Security, Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services and Resilient Cities.

Reviews

SN

This was an amazing relevant course, now i can take action to climate adaptation in Africa having a clear understanding on how to choose and implement the best option suggested.

CS

Aug 31, 2019

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

A comprehensive introduction to the current and potential long-term effects of climate change on the socio-economic well-being of the African continent.

From the lesson

Cities and the Urban Environment

With the higher concentrations of population in cities, comes a higher exposure to risk from climate change impacts. In African cities, many people live in informal settlements, which make them particularly at risk. Cities have many assets - such as transport, telecommunications, building and critical infrastructure - that are vulnerable to damage from extreme weather events. As cities serve as economic and political hubs, damage or disruption in cities can often have a larger impact on the region or even entire country. Adaptation measures for cities is a complex as there are intersecting issues. Our cases this week look at three cities - Maputo, Cape Town and Durban - which illustrate the adaptations being adopted.

Taught By

Mark New

Director

Transcript

So, living from exposure in terms of location and the types of climate risks that exist, we can look at how sensitive cities in general, and Africa cities in particular are to these risks. There are a number of factors that influence the sensitivity to climate hazards and the first of those is the extent of what people call risk-reducing infrastructure, and then the quality of that risk-reducing infrastructure that actually is in place. So these are things like roads which enable emergency services to get about, water supply systems, drains which drain flood water away, sewage systems, and how easily they can be compromised by extreme flooding events, and safe electricity supplies for instance. So, if all of those are in place and operating well, then that reduces the vulnerability from a sensitivity perspective of cities. Second aspect is the location of critical infrastructure. So where are for instance, hospitals, government buildings, electricity substation located? If they located in parts of the city that are subject to climate risk like in the floodplain of a river or close to the coast, then when you have these extreme climate events that really increases the sensitivity of the whole city to that climate event. A third dimension of sensitivity relates to the effectiveness of planning and governance within a city context. So how good are the building regulations in a city and are they actually enforced? So are we having buildings that are actually climate resilient or very climate sensitive? How good is the spatial planning and it's enforcement? Is development avoided in flood risk areas or does it happen regardless of the regulations because of poor enforcement? We could move on to talking about the extent of risk-reducing services. So this is a bit different to infrastructure, but here we're talking about emergency services like fire services, repairs to flooded drains, healthcare, policing, and even how well the water supply system is managed. If those are strong, then the city is more resilient and less sensitive to climate stressors. Then in an African context, really important factor is the proportion of people that are living in what we'd call climate resilient housing, good housing that can survive climatic extremes. In Africa as we know, many people are living in slums or in informal settlements, and so the type of houses they're living in a not particularly climate resilient, and they're also living in very densely populated areas. So slums tend to have very high density which makes more people at risk within those situations. One thing that we've learned is that when the services are in place, then the differential impacts of climate events on the rich and the poor, the well-off and the not-so-well off are lessened. Whereas, when they're not in place, then you tend to get the poorer parts of the city being much worse impacted than the better off parts. And we can see that in evidence from around the world. So for instance in terms of hurricane damage, in developing country urban areas, you tend to get many more deaths because of hurricanes than in developed country because there are services that protect life are in place in developed countries cities, and that's despite the fact that the actual economic damage is higher in developed countries because of the larger assets that are exposed in those situations.

Explore our Catalog

Join for free and get personalized recommendations, updates and offers.